SocialOut
A location-based social app that puts a live map of nearby activities in your pocket, so you can find people and do things together, spontaneously.
The brief
I kept running into the same gap: it is oddly hard to find people to do things with, spontaneously and nearby. The usual options meant planning days ahead, paying fees, or scrolling events that had nothing to do with where you actually were. I wanted the opposite, a live map of things happening now that anyone could join in seconds. So I built it, end to end, on my own.
The challenge
This was a full consumer product built solo: a real-time activity map, messaging, group chats, community spaces and workout tracking, plus the brand and every screen. The real challenge was scope. With no team and no deadline but my own, the risk was building forever, so I had to decide relentlessly what made the first version and what did not.
How I ran it
- 01Framed the product around one core loop: see nearby activities, then join or create in seconds.
- 02Scoped ruthlessly, deciding which of the 90+ activity types and features earned a place in the first version.
- 03Designed the whole experience myself, from the live map to messaging, spaces and workout tracking.
- 04Built it end to end into a complete, working product.
- 05Ran a competitive analysis before launch to pressure-test the opportunity honestly.
What I managed
- Product strategy
- Feature scoping
- UX/UI design
- Brand & identity
- Full build
- Monetization design
- Competitive analysis
A complete, working product built solo, then a deliberate decision not to launch after a competitive review showed the market was too crowded.
- A complete, functional product: live activity map, 90+ categories, direct and group messaging, community spaces and workout tracking.
- Designed and built entirely solo, from first concept through to a working app.
- A competitive review showed several incumbents were more mature, with features and network effects I could not match alone.
- I made the deliberate call not to launch. Knowing when a project is not worth shipping is as much a part of the job as delivering one.
Have a project like this?
I’m available for project management and delivery work. Tell me what you’re building and let’s map it out.